


Give Us This Day

by juniperwick



Category: Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead - Stoppard
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Comfort Sex, M/M, Memory Loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-08
Updated: 2014-01-08
Packaged: 2018-01-08 00:53:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1126442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/juniperwick/pseuds/juniperwick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Guildenstern - or is it Rosencrantz? - sometimes gets the feeling he's been here before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Give Us This Day

3.

'Do you ever think of yourself as actually _dead_ , lying in a box with a lid on it?'

They are sitting, back to back, on the cold marble of an Elsinore floor. Rosencrantz—or potentially Guildenstern—has laid his head back on the other's shoulder. Guildenstern—or, maybe, Rosencrantz—cocks his head to give his friend the eye. 'No.'

'Nor do I, really.' Rosencrantz'—or Guildenstern's—eyes are clear and guileless, gazing up into the painted ceiling. 'I mean one thinks of it like being _alive_ in a box; one keeps forgetting to take into account the fact that one is _dead_ —which should make all the difference—shouldn't it?' He looks at his friend who, caught looking at him, looks away.

Guildenstern—or Rosencrantz—twitches his mouth in a non-committal fashion and says nothing. Sometimes, if he sort of squints with his mind, he can feel the groove in which they are turning. He cannot imagine being dead. If he were dead, who would be here, haunting Elsinore like an unhappy ghost?

Rosencrantz—or Guildenstern—is still talking. '...Because you'd be helpless, wouldn't you? Stuffed in a box like that. I mean you'd be in there forever. Even taking into account the fact that you're dead, it isn't a pleasant thought. _Especially_ if you're dead, really.' He stirs, twitching his cloak around him. The other reaches back, puts a hand over his, and he stills. He goes on. ' _Ask_ yourself, if I asked you straight off—I'm going to stuff you in this box now, would you rather be alive or dead? Naturally you'd prefer to be alive.'

Guildenstern—or Rosencrantz—sometimes feels that eerie sense of having been here, done this before, in a dream or something. Something will happen, someone will say something, and he will think _yes, I knew that was going to happen_. Then, impatience or frustration or panic will well up in him like bile and spur him on to say something cruel, and the feeling will be lost. He'll forget it was ever even there.

_Sometimes_ , he thinks, _I want to say something, but when I go to say it, I say something else instead_. The thought distresses him. It's like a clenched fist at the pit of his stomach. The feeling of a predator stalking just outside of one's field of vision. 'You don't have to flog it to death,' he snaps, and Rosencrantz—or Guildenstern—falls silent. Guildenstern—or Rosencrantz—stands suddenly and paces away, letting his friend fall backwards.

 

2.

The first time—is it the first time?—they fuck is in the tar-reeking, sweat-stuffy below decks of the England-bound ship. Guildenstern—or Rosencrantz—had a mouth full of ready words and he was halfway across the distance between them already, with an outstretched hand, when Rosencrantz—or Guildenstern—caught his arm and stopped his lips with his own.

His friend's face is wet, salty with sea air and tears, and his lips—or was it his own?—are chapped. His heart thrums with aborted anticipation of half-remembered lines, but this—the skin, the warmth, the taste—is strange and thus at once thrilling and terrifying. 

There is an urgency to Rosencrantz' mouth—it is hard and insistent, or is it Guildenstern's?—that keeps him spellbound. Guildenstern's hands—or possibly Rosencrantz'—come up to tangle in his friend's hair. He takes fistfuls of it, wondering at the feel. 

It's dark, below decks. When they break apart, breathing heavy, they find and hold one another's eyes by the glint alone, straining at communication without words, communicating the necessity for wordlessness.

They undress hastily in the lamplight and grapple again, skin to skin, thrilling at the unfamiliarity. All clumsy fingers and slick mouths, the only sounds they make are intaken breaths and little unspelt syllables. Guildenstern—or Rosencrantz—trails his mouth over his friend's thigh, soft pale skin and dark hair, and thinks _are we two people, or one? Or none at all?_

Rosencrantz—or Guildenstern—twines his fingers in his friend's hair and feels the shape of his skull underneath as clear as something seen. He arches into his clever mouth and makes a wordless, wanting sound ( _a dying fall_ ).

When they are done, they half lie, half sit, on the age-smooth planking between the stowed barrels. Rosencrantz—or Guildenstern—rests his forehead against his friend's collarbone, his head fitting the curve of his neck. Guildenstern—or Rosencrantz—breathes into the other's hair, his hand absently smoothing the knobs of his spine. _Are we friends?_ he thinks. _I don't remember ever meeting you._

When Rosencrantz—they _think_ he's Rosencrantz, now—lifts his head, their eyes meet. He wets his lips, breathes uncertainly. Guildenstern—almost certainly Guildenstern—holds his gaze, trying to will silence into him. _Stay_ , he thinks. _Stay_.

Rosencrantz says, 'We've got nothing to go on.' 

Guildenstern—or possibly Rosencrantz—winces, as if stung.

Rosencrantz—or Guildenstern—continues, non-sequiturially, 'We're out on our own.' His eyes brim with strangled meaning.

Suddenly, the desire for closeness evaporates. Guildenstern—or Rosencrantz—slides away and stands, despite his protesting muscles. He yanks his shirt over his head and from inside it he says, 'We're on our way to England—we're taking Hamlet there.'

 

1.

Guildenstern—or Rosencrantz—cannot pin down the troubling, elusive feeling of resonance when at last the sea, the ship, dies away at the edges of his vision and he finds himself at the edge of something quite different, eyes blinded by lights.

Beyond the dazzling lights, there is a suggestion of movement—the murmuring intimation of the presence of a crowd, on the brink of visibility. Heart beating wild inside his chest, scalp prickling with the sudden heat, he turns his head to find Rosencrantz—or Guildenstern—and be sure of him. But he is gone. Where he had stood is now only darkness.

Darkness. Light. The felt presence of an unseen mass. 'There must have been a moment,' he says, quietly, to nobody but himself, 'at the beginning, where we could have said—no.'

Somebody coughs. Guildenstern—or Rosencrantz—feels weightless as if he were made of paper, of words. He swallows dryly. 'Rosen—?' He looks around, sees nothing, eyes full of light and dark. 'Guil—?' He cannot remember, now, the shape of his friend's face, or the sound of his voice. Cannot, in fact, remember a single word he had ever said. Memory, self, is a sandcastle being eroded by the oncoming tide. 'Well,' he says, 'we'll know better next time.' Not much left now. He gropes in his pocket for a coin that isn't there. A ghost of a smile touches his face as a memory stirs before falling away. 'Now you see me,' he says, 'now you—'


End file.
